SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. (KRON) – A ring may become much more than a fashion statement.
Combined with technology, it could become a wearable device that help curb the spread of COVID-19.
This is a smart ring called “Oura” and researchers at UCSF found it can be used to monitor some changes in your body that could tip you off to something that may be wrong.
The ring constantly checks on your temperature, heart, and respiratory rates.
The study found it was accurate in alerting a person to a fever even before any symptoms in 30 of the 50 study’s participants.
Researchers believe this could be key in early coronavirus detection.
It won’t tell you that you have COVID outright but again shares there something unusual to encourage a person to get tested.
“Well what’s really exciting about it, is it is doing continuous measurement so at any given moment I might take your temperature with a thermometer and it will be a given value but it turns out humans are all different. All of us actually have a different normal, and what this ring allows us to do is figure out how far off of our normal we are. That can trigger us and tell us something about, oh we might not be so well,” Dr. Ashley Mason, senior author of UCSF study said.
The hope is that people infected with COVID will be able to prepare and isolate sooner.